Wednesday, July 23, 2008

For a week or so an aerial truck platform thing lumbered like an hydraulic dinosaur around the building where I work. The property owners were either cleaning or painting or treating the stone at the top of the chimneys and stuff. It seemed like important work--important enough to use a SkyLift, exactly as in this image I have stolen off Flickr.

Anyway, at one point the beast was inching its way down the alley outside my office window, all the while sending out its mating call: an E7 beep. And I captured a little of it. At the very end of the recording there is a cool sound of engine noise as well, something very brief but Death Star-ish.

Monday, July 7, 2008

One night a few years back I was in my bedroom and heard a spooky sound coming from outside in the distance. I sought my microcassette-corder, opened the window, and captured a couple minutes of it on tape. I never figured out what it was. Motorcycles on the highway, racecars at the fairgrounds, an extraterrestrial spacecraft dropping a monolith for some apes? I hear G3, G#3, C#4, and D4.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Someone left a brief message on my home answering machine tonight. It appeared to be a wrong number as the caller says nothing and you can hear a mysterious siren in the background. Wonder where in the city it came from? And if it was them being chased. I love this kind of stuff. Thanks for the call, anonymous person! The beep is a B5.

Monday, June 23, 2008

We had a pretty short but nasty storm last week, which resulted in us losing power for close to twenty-four hours.

A neighbor (well, technically a neighbor three doors down from us) had a gas generator running during the outage, and was nice enough to let us hook up our freezer to it via a series of extension cords, in order to keep our food from spoiling.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

I was in my bedroom when I heard something that kinda sounded like a beeping. I went outside and realized it was a bird chirp. Seeking out the sound, I saw that it was coming from a robin in our neighbor's tree. There was a feisty squirrel making a racket in the same tree. I am not sure if the squirrel's chattering indicated that he was angry, but for some reason I like to think so.

The chirp seems to be pretty close to a B♭4, with an occasional dip to an A4.

Friday, June 13, 2008

I attended a delightful wedding last weekend in Madison, WI. On the reception tables were little bells to ring during happy couple kisses or just if you felt like it. Well of course I kept mine to turn it into a post here. It's spot-on an F5!

Monday, June 9, 2008

I caught a strange weather alert on the radio from the National Weather Service in nearby Lincoln, Illinois the other night. They'd been broadcasting a few of these ones with clipped announcements. I never found out why. It has a comedic effect, though, because the tones are such dramatic attention-grabbers and then the announcement just goes kaput.

And those tones are: Middle C (the short opening and closing tones) and a long note middle-way between G#5 and A5 (played before the announcement--probably some thousands of Hertz).

Friday, June 6, 2008

Two guys were using leaf blowers to blow grass clippings off the pavement of the funeral home across the street from where I work. The tones waver in pitch around an A3. Some might call it noise pollution. I call it a duo of groundskeeping drones. In stereo...

Monday, June 2, 2008

Toy elephant's central note was close to an F#2 whereas this is more of a C#2, a fourth lower. Mix them together with a dance beat a little bit and... I call it "Be And Elephant Are Friends". It's just a short, simple ditty.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

We posted 16 noises this month. So what could it sound like, put all together?

This is the Linear compile, all the sounds posted this month in chronological order to a beat. This month I twisted it: the second half is the sounds played in reverse chronological order IN REVERSE. You'll see--er, hear.

Monday, May 26, 2008

I was over at a friend's house recently where his kids are lucky enough to have an original Fisher Price Castle. I was pulling the springy flag pole on it back and letting it go when I noticed it was making a cool sound, so I recorded it. It's less musical than percussive, but knowing I'll probably be glad to have it in the soon-here May mix(es), I'm going to post it anyway and call it a Middle C, which it actually sounds a little bit like to me.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

His starting roar is a D then a D#--ah heck, I won't even pretend like the rest of them are notes of any kind. I just thought they were some cool sounds and would be fun to play with in the month-end mixes. Do I hear electric guitar in there?

Monday, May 19, 2008

This giant, industrial strength air conditioner sits atop a building on the campus of Sacred Heart-Griffin high school near my house. The other day I was walking by and noticed it emitting a loud musical hum. It's a note just sharp of a D4.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

I liked Helicopter In The Sky so much I mixed it with a few other sounds and some drum tracks. It's nothing special, really. Just a short experiment, it clocks in at 1 minute 29 seconds; Emerson Lake & Palmer music this isn't!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

My mom flies these wind chimes off the front porch awning of my parents' house. They (the wind chimes) are in the key of E major starting with an E5. In the recording, wind gusts blow through the trees and a neighbor's wind chimes in the distance--plus the requisite birds--to create a nice mixture of sounds.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This Black & Decker "Fire Storm" electric drill has a trigger that when pressed slowly, gradually cycles through its various speeds. The odd thing is each speed with this drill is accompanied by a particular tone. The tones don't correspond to any notes exactly, but they're all in the 6th octave, starting with, approximately, E6 and working up and bouncing around from there. The noise of the whole drill at top speed is about a D#4, in case you wanted to know.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Strolling north on 6th street in Springfield, Illinois the other day, I noticed it was near 2 o'clock and I was approaching the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which has bells in its clock tower that chime:

on the hour with a melody and then a number of dings announcing the hour

on the half hour with just the melody (no dings)

and on the quarter hour with a shorter melody

This recording, then, captures the full melody plus two dings. Hang in there during the 28 seconds between them. I always enjoy the sound of these bells when I catch them.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

I was out walking on my merry way one day when I turned a corner and there pulled over idling at the side of the road was a Springfield Mass Transit District bus. Luckily I had my Microtrak with me. This is recorded about ten feet from the back side of the bus. I think it turned out pretty cool.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

They were mowing the lawn of the funeral home across the street from where I work recently. The guy was on a riding mower, and for some reason as he turns from mowing parallel to me to coming toward me, there's a subtle flange effect. It's very cool. The note is close to an A2.

But it really comes to life on repeat. As a bonus (scoop) here is one minute of it! Crank it up!

Friday, April 18, 2008

I found this strange Mardis Gras necklace at my friend's house where it resides as a toy for their 3 1/2 year old daughter. You push a button on the back and it makes a mooing sound three times. Cute. I also like the gaudy beads.

As it moos, the pitch rises somewhat slowly, plateaus near a D3, and then falls off rapidly.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Who doesn't enjoy the calming sound of a box fan? I put the microphone right up to the motor to capture its hum as well as the background drone of the blades.

I hear simultaneous notes A#2 and C3. Probably the A# is the motor. Most motor hums in my house seem to be near A#, as evidenced here, here, and here. According to yet another article at Wikipedia that doesn't cite and references or sources,

Electric hum, mains hum, or power line hum is an audible oscillation at the frequency of the mains alternating current, which is usually 50 or 60 hertz depending on the local electric utility configuration.... Assuming a tempered scale with A=440Hz, a 60Hz tone is almost exactly halfway between A# and B two octaves below Middle C....

So perhaps I'm hearing a 60 hertz tone in the electric hum of these motors.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Here is the crash. Typical of cymbals, there are many overtones in it; the loudest ones here are G#4 and a C5.

In the case of the top hi-hat, this recording will demonstrate how complex the tonality of a cymbal can be. I strike it twice in two different places, the first time between the bow and the rim and the second time between the bow and the bell. In the first strike, there are distinct tones of B3, D#4, and E4, forming something like a B4 chord. In the second strike, the notes are tougher to discern, but they sound to me like A3, B3, and D#4, forming a nice B7 chord.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Last week I was walking down Harrison Street, headed towards Printer's Row for a leisurely lunch. Wouldn't you know the bells of the Harrison Street Bridge were a-banging, as the bridge was about to go up.

It's two notes played together at an octave interval -- a B♭3 and a B♭4.

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